Comment by peteforde

You make some excellent points, but what I think your perspective lacks is empathy. This stuff is so complicated.

If someone starts working on a project in college and 3-4 years later it blows up, they might now have a young family to consider. The person working on this thing that people love is no longer the same person who started it. In other words: life happened. Perspectives change.

It's also kind of pointless to deny human nature and we should at least try to assume best intentions; it's one thing to say all of the Rich Hickey stuff, and you might even believe it at the beginning of a project. X years later when someone raises $20M to build a company around the best parts of what you did and often forgets to mention you in the origin story... I suspect that would mess with you, and all of that stuff about entitlement would start to feel a bit thin. I don't begrudge people for those emotions, because it's not my place to do so and I see myself in their imperfect-ness.

Ultimately, I am optimistic that we will continue to establish better and better ways to create sustainable projects with maintainers that are compensated for their efforts.